his position owed it to society to
effect a union of classes, and private feeling must give way before the higher
motive. He reflected for a moment when Keene ceased to speak.
    »What did you say?« he then asked, still bluntly, but with less anger. »Just
tell me the words, as far as you can remember.«
    Keene was at no loss to recall inoffensive phrases; in another long speech,
full of cajolery sufficiently artful for the occasion, he represented himself as
having merely protested against misrepresentations obviously sharpened by
malice.
    »It is just possible that I made some reference to her character,« he
admitted, speaking more slowly, and as if desirous that no word should escape
his hearer; »but it did not occur to me to guard against misunderstandings of
the word. I might have remembered that it has such different meanings on the
lips of educated and of uneducated men. You, of course, would never have missed
my thoughts.«
    »If I might suggest,« he added, when Mutimer kept silence, »I think, if you
condescend to notice the letter at all, you should reply only in the most
general terms. Who is this man Dabbs, I wonder, who has the impudence to write
to you in this way?«
    »Oh, one of the Hoxton Socialists, I suppose,« Mutimer answered carelessly.
»I remember the name.«
    »A gross impertinence! By no means encourage them in thinking you owe
explanations. Your position doesn't allow anything of the kind.«
    »All right,« said Richard, his ill-humour gone; »I'll see to it.«
    He was not able, after all, to catch the early train by which he had meant
to take his brother to Wanley. He did not like to leave without some kind of
good-bye to his mother, and Alice said that the old woman would not be ready to
go before eleven o'clock. After half an hour of restlessness he sat down to
answer Daniel's letter. Keene's flattery had not been without its fruit. From
anger which had in it an element of apprehension he passed to an arrogant
self-confidence which character and circumstances were conspiring to make his
habitual mood. It was a gross impertinence in Daniel to address him thus. What
was the use of wealth if it did not exempt one from the petty laws binding on
miserable hand-to-mouth toilers! He would have done with Emma Vine; his time was
of too much value to the world